Monday, September 16, 2013

31DC2013 Day 16: Navajo Weaving

Today's theme is "tribal print." I wanted to make an attempt to be historically and culturally accurate in my manicure, so I started doing some research on Native American tribes. I eventually found an image of a Navajo blanket from the late 1800s that I really liked and that I thought would translate well. I did end up making a few changes to it so that it made more sense as a nail design. This is my final result!

This is the photograph of the blanket that I based my manicure off of. As you can see I did make a few changes, mainly to the red diamond areas.

For my base color, I used Color Club Mod In Manhattan. This off white shade is exclusive to a collection sold in the Birchbox Shop, though you could easily replace it with a shade like Zoya Jacqueline or OPI My Vampire is Buff.

Then, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided to try freehanding the thick black stripes on top. I definitely could have done them as a tape manicure (and it would have been way easier) but I need practice on my horizontal stripes. I used Duri Into the Further as the black here.

I used Zoya Pepper as the triangles, and this is one element of the manicure that I did use a tape technique on. The final step was to freehand the black points inside of the space.

I don't know about you guys, but I love the bone white combined with the brick red. There's something so "fall" about it, but it still has the bold graphic appeal from the black stripes.